Electronic messaging has become an integral part of the way people communicate with one another today. For instance, many people today utilize electronic mail (“e-mail”), instant messaging (“IM”), and short message service (“SMS”) messages to communicate with friends, family, and business associates. In general, electronic messaging provides a quick, efficient, and generally inexpensive mechanism for communicating with others.
Although electronic messaging provides a large number of benefits, there are also several disadvantages to this form of communication. For instance, certain types of electronic messages can be used so pervasively that users may simply be overloaded with messages. As an example, e-mail is the preferred form of communication in some organizations. In these organizations it is not unusual for individuals to be continually distracted from their work by the seemingly never-ending delivery of e-mail messages to their e-mail inbox. The interruptions caused by the non-stop delivery of e-mail messages can significantly reduce an individual's productivity.
One way to eliminate the distractions caused by the continued delivery of e-mail is to exit the e-mail client application. Another way to eliminate the distractions is to minimize the graphical user interface (“GUI”) window provided by the e-mail client application. These solutions are suboptimal, however, because they do not allow a user to continue to read previously received e-mail messages or to compose and send new e-mail messages. A user that utilizes these solutions is also prohibited from viewing all new incoming e-mail, even mail messages that are very important such as those that include updates to meeting requests. This can be extremely frustrating for a user that would like to view previously received e-mail or to compose and send new e-mail messages while still avoiding the interruptions caused by newly arriving e-mail messages.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure made herein is presented.